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Could Anandtech restrict the advertising to the banners? Editorial advertising forces poor ad-blocker programmers to work overtime.

First, right after the Barcelona (AMD quad-core) launch, we get an article titled "Quad core comes to play"... that pits Intel quad-core CPUs against AMD dual-core ones (published *after* AT covered Barcelona, in Johan's article). Secondly, the article ends with a link to the "Intel resource center". Finally, the article's icon, which contains AMD's logo, links to Intel's site.

You people - and you especially, Mr. Justin Case who LOVES AMD - are pathetic. "It's so unfair - AMD tries so hard and they have their quad core part shipping now and AnandTech intentionally published an article they had worked on for weeks right after the K10 launch in order to slight AMD!" Care for some cheese with your whine?

I guess I'm one of the few that can read all of the articles here and see what ISN'T explicitly stated? How about this one from Anand's Phenom "performance estimate":

quote:Then, at the very end (literally two hours before publication) of our benchmarking, the AMD server stopped POSTing. As of now the system will simply sit there and spin its fans without actually putting anything on the screen. A number of things could have happened, but thankfully the Barcelona system decided to die after we ran all of our tests.

Now let me tell you, as an IT guy that is ABSOLUTELY INSANE! We are talking an enterprise part, and it died during testing. Read the pre-launch articles as well, and you get the impression that AMD is scrambling like crazy to rush this out the door, that they've had all sorts of difficulties, and that at best Barcelona/Phenom need a few more months in the oven before they're fully baked. I can't even imagine any large corporation seriously considering Barcelona with statements like that, at least not until the BIOS revisions and everything else are worked out. But hey, let's let the blind AMD fanboys complain about biased coverage because Anand and company didn't run additional tests on a Barcelona server that broke down during testing!

You know what would be fair? It would be fair if Anand basically ripped AMD a new one and said what a complete joke the Barcelona launch has been. They got "final" CPUs one week before the launch: "We went from no Barcelona, to fist-fulls of Barcelona in one weekend." Ask any of the tech people out there when they first saw Harpertown CPUs in house. Yes, a product that hasn't been officially unveiled yet, and I'd bet there are thousands of the processors in the hands of testers, businesses, reviewers, etc. But AMD is freaking awesome because they made a new processor.

AMD having problems isn't the fault of Intel, Anandtech, NVIDIA, or anyone but AMD. They are failing to execute, they are missing windows of opportunity, and all the fanboys can do is try to find any excuse to blame someone other than the real culprits. AMD has issues right now, they are losing money, and it doesn't look like Barcelona is going to do anything beyond maintaining parity at best. Why don't you complain about people not benchmarking with the cherry picked 3.0GHz Barcelona chips that aren't on any roadmaps for the next year while you're at it? Complain about the unfair comparisons where a $350 Barcelona is compared to a $350 Clovertown, because the Intel chip runs at a 20% higher clock speed?

Again: pathetic. That's all your diehard AMD dedication is. If they had the better processor, that would be great, but it appears that they don't and very likely they won't for a long time. Frankly, I'm not sure they can survive the coming years if they continue their present trend. Hopefully IBM can bail them out (again). Reply

Had the situation been reverse, I would have said the same thing. The article's title is quad core comes to play. Now, as far as I see it, that can be interpreted in one of two ways:

1. Intel has just brought out their new quad core cpus so we can finally test them against AMD's dual core cpus.
OR
2. AMD has just released their quad core cpus, so we can finally test quad core cpus from both manufacturers.

Now, we know that 1. is false because Intel has had quad core cpus for over a year or something. And we know that 2. is also false because AMD's quad core cpus werent tested in this article.

So, at the end of the day, we have a meaningless title. Quad core comes to play? Duh its been out for ages.

In any case, I dont think that Anandtech are biased towards Intel. Oh no, I think they are just paid to do advertising articles sometimes. Like almost all sites. Look at this article: it comes out within days of AMD launching its server quad core cpus, the AMD/Intel logo goes to Intel's site, there is an Intel resource centre link at the end of the article. Too many coincidences for me to think this isnt anything but advertising.

Again, I will state I enjoy cpus from both manufacturers, and I have no preference. But this is just poorly disguised advertising. Had I known less about cpus, I would have thought the CPUs being tested were Barcelona cpus, and that it was found that Intel were better. You'd be surprised what people pick up from skimming over articles. Reply

IMHO the article was not really biased - it only convinced me that intel doesn't have such a great "low power" processor unless the load is kept high through virtualization, because in the real world there aren't that many servers that run at 100% 24/7. It was ok up until the "intel resource link"...and then I found out about the logo.........
Now how much are THEY paying for each click-$0.25? $0.30?
Wow...I'm speechless.
But it fits the bill- intel is the one that pays Google to advertise them when you search AMD. Why would I not think that AT is on someone's payroll? Not a real surprise- following steadily into THG shoes- away from enthusiast site , closer to click generator.
One step closer to deleting my bookmark. Reply

Despite what you may think, the advertising is totally separate from any editorial content. I have no idea who even advertises with us, and there has never been any suggestion of doing a good review for an advertiser - quite the opposite in fact. I have heard it specifically stated more than once, "Just because [company X] wants us to look at a product doesn't mean we need to do so. If it's interesting, then fine, but we are not an extension of the marketing departments."

Now, obviously Intel is an advertiser; no surprise there since they advertise with just about every hardware site out there. Do they pay extra for a link that says "Intel Resource Center" at the end? Probably - I don't even know - but that link is automatically inserted by the document engine whenever we (or really I, given I'm the content editor) select Intel as the manufacturer on an article. As for the logo... well, that's tied to the same thing.

I have now changed the manufacturer to "Various" as opposed to Intel, which makes the logo do... nothing, other than take you back to the main AT page. (I wish we got paid for every click on that....) I didn't really think about it when posting the article, and since it was primarily an update of the Dual-core results only with an Intel Quad-core CPU, I figured it was sensible that Intel was the primary manufacturer and set it accordingly. Thus, the logo took you to the Intel site, just like the logo in my review of the HP Blackbird 002 links back to HP when you click it.

Sorry for the confusion, but the conspiracy theories are unfounded. Back to your regularly scheduled articles, and feel free to check back tomorrow afternoon for a continuation of this series.

See above. The actual title is: "Low Power Server CPU Redux: Quad-Core Comes to Play" Note the Low Power part; the Xeon L5335 L5320 and L5310 are indeed newer parts - the L5335 in particular. We looked at LV Xeon and Opteron last time (something like SIX MONTHS after the parts were initially released), so the fact that this article continues from that point as opposed to the latest Barcelona isn't particularly relevant. Different editors, different testing procedures, different locations. Barcelona and Harpertown testing for a future article are in progress... which means not done, which is why this article was posted now without such information. I'd love to get all the latest data for every option out there "yesterday" as well; unfortunately, reality isn't so easy. Reply

I "love" AMD about as much as I love any other mega corporation (which is to say very, very little). I buy whichever CPUs give better performance per dollar or (in very rare situations) better performance per watt. Right now that means Intel for laptops and 1S workstations, AMD for servers, and either one for midrange desktop systems.

What I definitely do not love is the way some of the main "hardware review" websites have turned into an extension of the manufacturers' marketing departments, basically publishing press releases, fake "reports" and "editorial" ads. Hardware review sites are supposed to be allies of the consumers, not allies of the industry.

If it wasn't for Anand's and Johan's articles (and the comments from a small number of smart and informed people), this site wouldn't be worth reading at all, these days.
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Just somewhat curious as to why the hybrid AMD/Intel Logo on each page of the review next to the author info has a link that goes to Intels site? Obviously anand can do what he wants, I just saw it as kinda wierd that a hybrid logo with AMD on it would go to Intel? :?

You'll get Barcelona results for this sort of testing soon enough. The problem is, AnandTech isn't a single location; like many websites, we have people scattered around a large area. Johan and Christoph are even located in Europe, for example. So just because one of us has immediate access to certain hardware (i.e. the Barcelona launch CPUs) doesn't mean we all have access at the same time. Besides, the Barcelona launch articles literally had access to the CPUs for about four days before launch, and they were busy running other tests for the duration of that time. Reply

I suppose it's beyond Anandtech's technical ability to run the same benchmarks in the "european" and "american" systems, and compare the results? Maybe they wouldn't be valid due to the time zone or the metric system or something...?

Or maybe this article's "conclusions" had already been written, and doing a real quad vs. quad (instead of quad vs. dual) comparison would have spoiled things?

As a matter of fact, yes, the article testing was indeed completed before Barcelona officially launched. The introduction and conclusion were edited to account for the fact that Barcelona is now officially launched (though not actually available for purchase anywhere). Will we test Barcelona performance/watt for a future article? Yes, and probably sooner rather than later. Does that make this article wrong? Nope. The conclusion is that a currently available quad-core Clovertown LV can beat a dual-core Opteron in some cases.

"In this article we see the tables turn somewhat. With two extra cores the Intel Clovertown parts are able to easily outpace the AMD Opteron, at least when overall load is near saturation. At low to average workloads, there is little difference between any of the parts, in which case server consolidation might be a better solution. Obviously, the quad-core parts are best suited for loaded database servers and their sweet spot is in virtualized environments." (Emphasis added.)

I'm not exactly sure what the problem is with that conclusion. Quad-core is better in heavy load environments, and having the ability to choose between quad and dual-core CPUs certainly can't be bad for companies. I guess you would rather have nothing than an article that examines one more facet of the performance spectrum? FB-DIMMs still use a lot of power, but it's nice to see that as the number of CPU cores ramps up, the overall penalty isn't quite as severe. How will Barcelona and Harpertown change the picture? We will have an article on that subject soon enough. Reply

Intel LV Quad-core is in fact brand new, however, and it's actually available for purchase right now. That is what this article is about, and the introduction makes it pretty clear. If the title makes some people click through to check out the article, and they end up disappointed that Barcelona isn't present, they can get over it. I'm sure when we post the Barcelona equivalent that it will have some equally catchy title to get people to give it a look.

Perhaps by that point in time Barcelona procs will actually be available at major vendors. You can find prices for the Opteron 2350 at a lot of places, but every site that I've checked out is "temporarily backordered" or "out of stock". At $400-$500, the Opteron 2350 will certainly be an interesting alternative. Companies that have Socket F/1207 servers will definitely be interested. Of course, before they switch they'll want to test for at least a few weeks (or months) in a non-production environment. BIOS flashing on a server is not something IT departments like to do on a regular basis, and my bet is we will see several BIOS updates before the transition is done. Reply

"Low Power" is in the title... I'm not sure we can really do much more beyond changing the title to "Low Power Quad-Core Xeon without Barcelona"... but just wait a bit longer and then you can see other results for other CPUs. Reply

So you're saying that this article was published now due to the release of new low-voltage Xeon models, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Barcelona launch?

'mkay...

Following that line of thought, the article's title should have been "Quad-core Xeons: Low power models come to play". The "new" thing (and thus what now "comes to play") is the low voltage, not the fact they are quad-core.

It would still be odd (to say the least) that you didn't run a single benchmark on a Barcelona system, but at least the article's title wouldn't be so blatantly deceptive.
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I would rather have an article called "quad core coming to play" that actually tests quad-core CPUs from both major manufacturers, and not quad core from one versus dual-core from the other. This article would have made perfect sense one week after Intel's quad-core Xeons were launched. Not one week after Barcelona was launched.

As other have pointe out, this article is obsolete on arrival. People choosing between dual-core Opterons and quad-core Xeons have made their decision a long time ago. Anyone who still hasn't is obviously waiting for quad-core Opteron numbers.

If three days (actually seven, but let's pretend your Barcelona systems were busy 24/7 during the first four) weren't enough to run a single "performance-per-watt" server benchmark on both systems (or on a dual-core vs. quad-core Opteron), and present a comparison, then maybe it would have made more sense to wait another day or two, and release a relevant article instead of one that looks more like a (bad) Intel PR exercise, timed just to coincide with the lanuch of faster CPUs from the competition.

Since it appears that AMD made good on its work to deliver Barcelona chips that don't consume any more power than their dual-core Opteron counterparts, I'm thinking that Intel is either going to have to make some significant speed improvements with Harpertown or lower the power consumed by the platform somewhat to beat AMD in the performance/watt category. The move to 45nm will certainly help in that area (barring another Prescott SNAFU), but it's still going to be interesting. Reply

Performance per watt? Why do people keep saying that...to most people that really matters little in the grand picture. They want the best performance at a certain pricepoint. Who counts wattage when making a choice in CPU or any type of hardware not including a PSU. If one is faster at a certain price you're ready to pay then that's the one you'll get. Performance per watt is something people say when their choice is slower. Reply

You're right that people with a couple servers running don't really care too much, unless it's extremely bad like Prescott was. However, there is a reason that both Intel and AMD have been hyping efficiency and coming out with special low-power products. It's because the data centers that are trying to cram 200 computers into a single room without overloading the buildings power system can get more computing power given their limited resources. For this market price almost doesn't matter, as it costs much more to get a new building then it does to pay more to get lower power efficient cpus. Reply

Everything you're saying is pretty much true... until you actually start talking about the market sectors these parts are aimed at.

You have to get out of your tiny little mindset that all new product releases are aimed at enthusiasts and consider that there is more than one market out there.

In the server and HPC spaces, performance per watt is very important because lower power consumption allows for greater density (in most cases). Who cares if one architecture is 15% faster per-core-per-clock when I can fit 25% more of the slower architecture into the same power and space envelope? Reply

Barcelona is being shipped to OEMs and is not available to customers regardless of what AMD says. Are you suprised that there is no Barcelona Benchmarks? There hasn't been any for months and even weeks before the launch. AMD is the only one to blame for no 3rd party benchmarks as they don't offer press kits ahead of time for 3rd party testing. If they have, it's a rarity. For now it's back to the AMD slideshows. Reply

quote:If there was ever any doubt that Intel made a bad decision not going true quad-core, it should be clear with numbers like these that their decision was sound and is paying off. Quad-core processors may not be faster in every situation, but in heavily threaded CPU intensive environments the extra CPU cores are easily able to make up for any penalties associated with the dual-die packaging.

Their decision was sound from a business point of view. Native quad core is difficult, it costs a lot. AMD was months late to market with their quad core, most likely in part due to it.

Yet, with AMD's native quad core CPU already out, I fail to see why you say that Intel decision was the right one. Had you posted this article a month ago, yes I would have agreed that Intel's quad cores were running rings around AMD, and despite their higher power efficiency in some cases, Intel was winning over all, especially in higher loads. But now, the situation is different - AMD has their own native quad core, which in all likelihood is more energy efficient than the Intel. Thus, your conclusion isnt valid - Intel's choice was right at the time, because AMD could not compete, but now they can, and now its quad core vs quad core, and the fact that AMD's quad core is a single die gives it a small but significant advantage.

Why did you not benchmark the Barcelona chip? I'm aware its not really available in volume right now, but... Reply

Intel having quad-core before AMD did give them the upper hand, because native quad-core as it turns out, only gave a small advantage to AMD. Although it doesn't seem like AMD is winning this race with barcelona, they need to stop their stubborness and accept the fact that MXM design is the way to go and start pumping out octa-cores before intel does. It's the only way amd can regain their crown. I mean the fact that native quad-core means low yields is already costing them millions, they need to accept the fact that MXM is a more efficient solution for making processors. Reply

AMD has had ample time to scale their processor to a winning choice. MCM was the smartest choice as Intel was bringing in money over the year as AMD showed no competition. Even though Barcelona is still coming (Don't act like it's here already.) AMD is still losing money.

Even AMD said themselves they wish they had come out with an MCM design with Intel. Unfortunately since they are behind on processor technology it wouldn't have been feasible.

Even you have said "small, but significant advantage" in other words an advantage that is way too late because they took the long route to revenue. With such a large die size, I can see that yields will still remain low til Intel comes out with definitive competitive beast in very high yields and wide avaiablity. So from a business point of view, AMD is failing. If AMD cannot cut Intels technology lead by half a year, we will continue to see this trend til there is no more AMD.

Intel's manufacturing lead has been pretty much constant for a decade (if anything, the gap is slightly smaller now).

AMD has a much bigger market share today than they did in the K7 (and K6, etc.) days. Add the fact that AMD now has some of the best GPUs in the market, a lot of very important patents, an excellent team of engineers and deals with most top OEMs (all things they didn't have back then), and it's pretty obvious that news of AMD's death are greatly exaggerated.

The problem with AMD is they're trying to grow too fast. To sustain their current growth rate, they're going to have to start turning in a profit very soon (as in under 5 months), which is not very likely.

If AMD manages to ramp Barcelona to, say, 2.6 GHz in volume until the end of the year (which is not impossible; the issue is related to a respin, not progressive improvement), then the risks they've been taking probably will pay off. Otherwise they'll be forced to slow down and compete based on price, at least until Bulldozer is ready. Their latest GPUs are looking pretty good, too, so they might be able to get by on profits from the ATI division even if Barcelona takes longer to ramp (as I suspect it will).

In any case, this idea that some people seem to have that AMD is "ruined" and "about to disappear" is complete nonsense. They're in a much better position today than they were in 2002, and they didn't disappear in 2002, either.

P.S. - A dual-die (2+2) CPU would have been perfectly feasible (just slap a second core on the same package, connected by HT, and treat is as a RAM-less CPU one hop away), and AMD would have easily been able to release it before Intel. It was an executive decision not to do so, and one that I'm sure they regret. The market for quad-core CPUs is small but pretty lucrative. They were probably hoping to have Barcelona out ahead of schedule, and instead it got delayed (hardly something new, chez AMD). On the other hand, I'm sure they're glad they did not go with FB-DIMM (despite having licensed the patents and planned to support it with Barcelona).
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quote:Yet, with AMD's native quad core CPU already out, I fail to see why you say that Intel decision was the right one. Had you posted this article a month ago, yes I would have agreed that Intel's quad cores were running rings around AMD, and despite their higher power efficiency in some cases, Intel was winning over all, especially in higher loads. But now, the situation is different - AMD has their own native quad core, which in all likelihood is more energy efficient than the Intel. Thus, your conclusion isnt valid - Intel's choice was right at the time, because AMD could not compete, but now they can, and now its quad core vs quad core, and the fact that AMD's quad core is a single die gives it a small but significant advantage.

That's not the point. The point is that Intel went with an MCM design and was therefore able to sell quads for almost a year before AMD could provide any competition. Intel made a good decision and just because AMD finally have something to compete with, doesn't make that decision go from good to bad in the blink of an eye. It almost seems as if you believe the tested Intel quad core is a new product. It's not, it's still the old Clovertown core, although it's based on the newer G stepping. Reply

I think thats exactly the point. yes Intel had the overrall performance lead for over a year with their Core 2 architecture.

And even now, they hold the top spot until Barcelona scales to higher clocks.

but, in a performance per watt race, they no longer hold the top spot because they no longer have the only quad core cpu.

Saying that Intel made the right decision in rushing a quad core to market is true. But it only holds true while AMD doesnt have its own quad core. When AMD does, it doesnt really matter who came first - it matters who offers better performance per watt.

Therefore, now that AMD has quad core chips out, it doesnt matter what Intel did to get theirs out first, it matters which is the best chip.. The Radeon X1950 has been out for longer than the 8800 GTS, does taht mean it is a better graphics card? Reply